A River Runs Through It—And So Does Ford

One of the small joys of working at Ford Motor Company is that everyone you meet seems to have a Ford story, and every place you go has a connection to the Blue Oval.  The guy beside you on the plane learned to drive in a Fairlane. The venue for the wedding reception in Charlotte was once a Model T Factory.

But as I embarked on a long-planned family rafting trip through the Grand Canyon – a voyage down the Colorado River, through cliffs so sublime, seductive and ancient even the poets can’t capture them in words – I reckoned this was surely one trail that didn’t lead back to ol’ Henry’s 122-year-old company.

Well, I was wrong.

We chose Hatch River Expeditions as our guides. The company traces its own multi-generational history back to 1929, when Bus Hatch led the first ever commercial rafting trip in Vernal, Utah on the Green River. Five years later, he led his first Grand Canyon trip. The river was even wilder then – before the Hoover Dam – and trip provisions largely consisted of a shotgun and a couple of bottles of whiskey. Eventually, Bus’s sons Don and Ted took over the business, passing it down to the third generation, Steve and Sarah Hatch, who have been running Hatch River Expeditions since 2007. 

“After all these years, the river continues to draw me back,” Steve once said, “No matter how many trips I take, there is always something new to be discovered or somebody new to share it with. It amazes me how traveling downriver with someone new can bring such a new and unique perspective.”

As we began our journey, the beauty and vastness of the Grand Canyon was almost too much to fathom.  We cannot enlarge the realm of our understanding. While it is astonishingly photogenic, no snap can fully capture its depth, scale, and blue-and-amber beauty.

After negotiating the first rapids – through water fit for a cold plunge – our fearless guide Matt struck up a conversation. 

“You’re the Ford guy, yeah?”

‘Um. Yeah,” I reply through chattering teeth.

“I got a Ford story for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

And quite a yarn it was. 

One summer many decades ago, a young Ted Hatch received a call from the Pelican Film Company.  They represented Ford and wanted to create a commercial showing the 1967 Ford LTD navigating the white waters of the Colorado River and driving away unscathed.

Ted, exhausted from running the rivers all summer, threw out a price quote he was sure the Madisen Avenue bigshots would reject.  “Deal!” they said.

So Ted Hatch hired some friends to fashion a sturdy boat covered with wood slabs to resemble a log raft. Ted himself drove the long LTD sedan onto the raft, while others watched, taking bets on whether it would float.  It did.  And down the river wild went the staid and civilized Ford LTD.

Lashed to the raft, the LTD whooshed through the Travertine Falls with camera operators positioned on the banks at various altitudes. The film crew reached their perches by dangling out of a helicopter. 

Ted’s job was to slide under the car and steer the motorized raft through the rapids with scant visibility. He had to stay well-hidden so the world could see the Ford LTD alone taking on the whitewater.

On the first major rapid, a massive wave snapped his handle.

“I couldn’t steer, and here I was underneath the car going through the tail end of the rapids.  I was afraid I’d wash into the cliff and wreck the car,” Ted later wrote. “I finally climbed out.  They had made their shots.”

Ted frantically motioned for help to get him off the boat.  His old river-running friend, Shorty Burton, steered over in a 28-foot pontoon and gently edged the LTD-laden raft to the banks. When the director arrived by helicopter, Ted warned him that if they tried many more rapids like that, the new car could be lost.

 “Oh, don’t worry, Ford Motor Company makes a lot of cars,” the director replied.

Ted and crew nearly quit due to the danger, but the agency persisted.  They needed this ad for halftime of the Rose Bowl college football game. Some river runners who came by just to watch the spectacle were immediately hired for $100 a day, five times the going rate.  And the filmmakers kept them happy with steaks and whiskey in the evenings of the multi-day shoot.

And just like my family and I did on our trip, the intrepid filmmakers and local crew set up tents on the sandy shores of the Colorado, played cards until there was no more light, and then stared at the dazzling constellation of stars and the spill of the Milky Way above the canyon at night.

Mark Truby is Ford’s Chief Communications Officer